Mackie hunched more and more as the tunnel entrance got farther away behind him. He hadn't liked this the first time, and he didn't like it now. Lanterns or not, this place was a cave, and the sky was gone, and he couldn't decide if it was worse in the places where the cave ceiling was visible, or where it rose high enough that there was nothing overhead but swallowing dark.
Not the dark of night-time, where there were stars, moon... even on cloudy nights when the moon was showing its dark face and didn't even glow behind the clouds... there was air, moving air, the smell of grass and trees and everything.
He was cold, too. Wasn't cold outside, where there was sun and space, but it was chilly in here, it seemed to him. Cold. The sun was far away. He though about stopping to dig a shirt or a sweater out from his pack, but if he stopped, it would take even longer to get through, and that was a bad idea all around.
He'd camped before coming in here, wanting to take the walk through during the day, knowing at least that there'd be light at the other end.
He wanted to get Bonnie and Luster out. More than knowing they could surely fight off anything that lived in here, it would be company, but it was so early in the morning now, both had been asleep when he woke, and so he'd packed up quietly, recalled them to their balls without so much as waking them up, and set off. He hadn't thought it would be this bad.
On his way through here before, it hadn't been the crack of dawn, and there'd been lots of people, in groups and alone, but foot traffic like a city street, almost, the sounds of talking and of feet on the wooden walkway making the place almost bustle.
Now it was just him, and his sandals. The slap-slap of his footsteps echoed, the sound returning to his ears tinny and eerie.
He heard a faint screech behind him, then another and another, and more and more, and the sound of wings en masse, not a flock but a swarm. The cave was filled with it, multiplying the din, and it was coming closer, and closer.
Mackie walked faster for about ten steps before he started to run, and the sound of his feet on the floor was inaudible now, in the rush of noise. It came for him, and it reached him and surrounded him, screeching and flapping, and he bolted.
One of his sandals caught between two planks and he fell, sprawled, and rolled with the momentum of his panic, off the walkway itself and up against a cave wall. He scrambled to put his back against it, and stared upward.
Faintly outlined in the glow of the lanterns were the rapidly-moving wings and bodies of a mass of Zubat. They were flying as near the ceiling as possible and all moving together.
Mackie's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his stomach, but, as he watched the Zubat above, it slowed some.
"Just... just comin' in for the day," he said to himself. They lived in caves, of course. He knew that. He'd heard people mentioning it on the way down, too. When Zubat went out, it was during the night. But some caves held whole families that slept in the caves all day, and went out at night to forage for food. That was all. It wasn't the cave out to eat him, or any old thing like that. "Oh, Mackie, you've got a brick for a brain," he told himself, closing his eyes briefly.
Almost as abruptly as it had come on, the Zubat noise was gone, the Zubat all having disappeared down a side tunnel somewhere to roost for the day. Mackie stayed exactly where he was until he was sure, though.
Just... in case.
"Dig. Dig-dig," he heard, right next to him, and he most certainly did NOT scream.
He... yelped. In a very manly fashion, he firmly told himself later. While jumping up and fleeing (still in a manly fashion) back to the walkway.
"Dig! Dig-dig-diglett!!" the calls persisted as he turned and looked back at where he'd been sitting. As the sound had indicated (after the initial shock wore off), it was a Diglett, smoothly-furred brown head poked up from its hole, black eyes glaring down at the place Mackie had just been sitting. Like many places in the cave, this part of the floor wasn't rock, but just dirt. Earth. Thus, he realized, places to dig in.
Mackie couldn't see anything particularly wrong with where he'd fallen, and he didn't know what the Diglett was annoyed about. "Uh..." he said, still recovering from the combined daze of the Zubat swarm and this most recent appearance. "I—sorry, did I bust up somethin'?" he asked. He could only see what was on top. Maybe he'd caused an avalance in the Diglett's living room, for all he knew.
"DigLETT!!" the pokemon snarled, and surged forward. It moved amazingly quickly, without even coming out of the ground, digging through it like a water pokemon swam—it was amazing, and frightening.
Mackie backed up, but not fast enough. The Diglett, faster than Mackie could clearly see, leaped from its hole and suddenly there was a sharp line of agony down Mackie's calf. Then the Diglett was back in its hole again, threat radiating from it.
The fear Mackie felt this time was different from the amorphous terror of the Zubat overhead. This was sharp and immediate and right there in front of him. And he'd never known, until right now, not REALLY known, why it was dangerous in the wild for people without pokemon to protect them.
Some pokemon liked people.
Some didn't.
"Bonnie," he gasped, "help!!" he fumbled her ball from his backpack as the Diglett leaped at him again, scoring another hit on his leg. Mackie dropped the ball without even hitting the button, but it bounced, and then twitched, and red light erupted out, and then Bonnie was there, screeching inarticulately.
Mackie collapsed onto his rear, grabbing at his leg, but keeping his eye on Bonnie.
The Diglett growled, and Bonnie dodged a spray of sand. Maybe she could send it to sleep, she had learned that, after the battle with that Wooper. "Sing!" he called to her. If the Diglett slept, they could get away from here.
But maybe she was too agitated, or the Diglett's growl messed up the sound, but the notes she sang out didn't do a thing, and the Diglett darted out again, the Scratch attack landing on Bonnie this time, as she banked near the Diglett. She bore the blow, and Mackie, for the first time, had the direct comparison between the relative strength of humans and pokemon. How lucky were humans that they could befriend some of these creatures?
"Peck!" he called out. "Stop it from growling!"
She did just that. After so much growling, her attacks didn't land as hard as they would've otherwise, but the Diglett didn't seem to have her stamina, and its territorial fury, or whatever had it so very angry, seemed to deflate a little with each strike of her beak against its furry head.
Mackie spared a look at his leg, and his eyes widened at the tears in the leg of his overalls, and the blood staining the edges. He got to his feet anyway, and it wasn't so bad—the scratches burned, and moving made it worse, but it was only the skin, that was all. Nothing deeper was hurting, not like that time he'd stepped on a nail, right into his foot. "Sing, Bonnie! Make it sleep!" He told her. She tried again. This time, the notes of her song floated out into the cave, and Mackie had to shake himself, too.
The Diglett, surely aided by the daze her pecks must have caused, slumped over, its small body barely shifting with its slowed, slumbering breathing. Mackie stared at it, the throb of his scratches foremost in his awareness now that the fight was done.
"Swaaa?!" Bonnie cried, landing right on the dirty plants of the walkway so she could grasp gently at the cloth of his torn overalls.
"Nothing, s'fine, pretty girl," he told her, and balanced a little awkwardly, water bottle from his back in hand, and shook off his sandal. He pulled up the overall leg, and winced. Blood had run down his leg, and it looked awful.
"Swa!!" Bonnie snapped, and turned to the Diglett, flapping upward in a fury.
"No! No, you don't do that," he said immediately. It was asleep. It wasn't doing anything now. Competitive spirit was fine. He wasn't going to let her kill anything. It was just a wild pokemon, angry at people who passed through its home.
She subsided, landing on the edge of the walkway, staring fixedly at the Diglett. If it woke, they'd have to fight again. He hoped it stayed asleep for a while.
He drizzled water over the cuts, hissing at the sting of it. They washed off pretty good, though, and he sighed with relief. Few good inches long each, bit deep, but not too deep. They were still bleeding, but he used the overall leg to dry the place off. He wasn't gonna wait around here to bandage it, though. A proper wash and covering he could do later, after they were farther away from this little monster.
He moved to his pack again, and shoved the water bottle back in. The bright red of one of the new pokeballs caught his eye. They were supposed to work better, weren't they?
And this pokemon... it really was dangerous. It had nested, or something, so close to the path, what if someone passed through here alone without pokemon because they didn't know better?
If he could catch it, maybe he could turn it in at a Pokemon Center, or something. The League would know what to do with it. Let it go free somewhere far from people, or something.
He threw the ball, watching the red light surround the Diglett. The ball rolled away from the edge of the dirt mound around the Diglett's hole, and twitched a few times.
(OOC: I think Mackie really hates caves now, poor thing. That's going to be a problem later! And he has a bias against Digletts, lol. Good thing he didn't meet an Onix, eh?)